Defiant Clarence Thomas fires back

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas – his impartiality under attack from liberals because of his attendance at a meeting of conservative donors sponsored by the Koch brothers and his wife’s tea party activism – struck a defiant tone in a Saturday night speech in Charlottesville, Va., telling a friendly audience that he and his wife “believe in the same things” and “are focused on defending liberty.”

Delivering the keynote speech at an annual symposium for conservative law students, Thomas spoke in vague, but ominous, terms about the direction of the country and urged his listeners to “redouble your efforts to learn about our country so that you’re in a position to defend it.”

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He also lashed out at his critics, without naming them, asserting they “seem bent on undermining” the High Court as an institution. Such criticism, Thomas warned, could erode the ability of American citizens to fend off threats to their way of life.

“You all are going to be, unfortunately, the recipients of the fallout from that – that there’s going to be a day when you need these institutions to be credible and to be fully functioning to protect your liberties,” he said, according to a partial recording of the speech provided to POLITICO by someone who was at the meeting.

“And that’s long after I’m gone, and that could be either a short or a long time, but you’re younger, and it’s still going to be a necessity to protect the liberties that you enjoy now in this country.”

Thomas spoke at the closing banquet for the symposium, which was sponsored by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. Several hundred law students, professors, Federalist Society staffers and guests were in the audience for his speech, which was closed to the press.

It was the first time Thomas has spoken out – at least in a semi-public setting – about the mounting controversies that have swirled around him and his wife, Virginia Thomas, who goes by “Ginni” and who was in Charlottesville with her husband.

The justice’s critics have argued that his attendance at, and speech to, a private January 2008 gathering of major conservative donors sponsored by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers in Palm Springs, Calif. and his wife’s political activism have compromised his position on the court.

The liberal group Common Cause suggested in a January letter to the Justice Department that Justice Thomas’s connection to conservative donors may have been grounds for him to recuse himself from the Supreme Court’s ruling last year in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the court’s decision striking down decades-old restrictions on political spending.

Thomas sided with the conservative majority in the decision, which allowed corporations to fund political ads and contributed to an explosion in advertising campaigns funded with anonymous contributions in the 2010 midterm elections.

At conferences like the one in Palm Springs in 2008, the wealthy Koch brothers, Charles and David, and their operatives have raised millions of dollars for groups that air such ads, POLITICO has reported.

Thomas’s expenses for the conference were paid for by the Federalist Society, sponsor of Saturday’s symposium, according to his financial disclosure forms. Tax filings show that the Kochs, through their family’s charitable foundations, have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the society, though that represents only a fraction of the group’s overall budget, which comes from hundreds of donors.